I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt as people I respect and love shared it.

There are some great points to it: Calling members of the Christian church to truly love members of the LGBT community instead of screaming truth as a means of love. To solidify his point, Author John Pavlovitz cites real-life examples of Christians murdering some gay people and taunting others to the point of suicide.

Although Pavlovitz is correct in saying that this version of Christian love is not good theology, I would challenge him by saying that what he is calling out in “believers” is neither Christian nor theology.

The definition of “theology” as defined by good ol’ Webster is, “the study of God and God's relation to the world.”

Pavlovitz says many Christians’ study of God seems to point them toward the hatred that causes kids to hang themselves.

Real study of God would show the Word saying the act of engaging in homosexual activities is what is the detestable in the eyes of God—not the people.

Furthermore, that same word “abomination” or “detestable” is used again in Proverbs to describe God’s distaste of prideful, lying, and problem-stirring people. Know any of those?

In Romans 1:18-32, Paul refers to homosexual acts, but it’s in a growing argument about the fallenness of man. He describes how the truth of God was “obvious ” to humanity through creation, but they weren’t thankful to God for it. They did not worship Him for it. They worshipped created stuff.

Because of this, God “abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired.” And yes, one of the results of that abandonment was that they had sex with the same gender.

But the story doesn’t end here with Paul saying, “They didn’t worship God, so God abandoned them to have sex with the same gender, and then he smote them all.”

No, it continues. Next, “he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done.” This includes greed, hate, envy, pride, disobeying parents, and having no mercy.

Pavlovitz talks about how Jesus encourages love of all instead of hating LGBT people with our theology.

Pavlovitz implies that to choose to embrace a Christianity that includes calling homosexual acts a sin means I have to hate my LGBT friends.

This is simply not true. What it means is that I get to love my LGBT friends as Christ loves me, AND I can believe that same-sex actions are not God’s best life for them (or for me).

To embrace true Christian theology means that I accept the truth and love of the Bible.

However, I will add one last note on this word “truth.”

Pavlovitz notes that many Christians scream “truth” at homosexuals and then run. (“It’s full of vile profanity, and utter contempt, and crude jokes, and physical violence, and white-hot fear,” he says.)

He’s right. This is not truth because it does not have the love attached to it.

I'd encourage you to read this article. Kind of wordy, but helpful: http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2014/11/13/not-that-kind-of-homosexuality/

I like this quote (and many more): "How can we be sure Paul had these bad examples in mind? If he did, why didn’t he use the Greek word for pederasty? Why didn’t he warn masters against forcing themselves upon slaves? Why does the Bible talk about men lying with men and the exchange of what is natural for unnatural if it wasn’t thinking about the created order and only had in mind predatory sex and promiscuous liaisons? If the biblical authors expected us to know what they really had in mind—and no one figured this out for two millennia—it appears that they came up with a remarkably ineffective way of getting their point across."

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